Help. Kolbold ideas needed.
Hey role players, I need some guidance. I asked my party “what powerful force from “downwind” ( of all this burning wreckage) comes to investigate, and how do you know they are coming?”
They answered “a kobold scouting party is coming, and they know this because they hear the drums in the distance.”
And so, let there be kobolds.
they refers to the kobolds.
1 they have secrets.
2 they have 60-90 kobolds in this scouting party
3 they are looking for information
4 they are almost out of time, and need a nesting location right now
5 there are 4 factions. priests, “drivers”, warriors, and lizard handlers
6 the war wagons were apparently way too cool, and the party simply surrendered themselves to the patrol, and was peacefully escorted to the kobold scout camp, even though they are convinced it is a bad idea.
7 every attempt by the players to not go to the main camp was met with polite and firm redirection of the conversation….
8 The kobolds understand the human language, but do not speak it
9 The kobolds fed cooked human meat to the lizard man in the party when he tried to get the war wagon to stop for lunch.
10 the bard was given a new music instrument when she asked them to drive a different direction.
11 a priest is very angry at the party’s arrival
What do I do now as they have surrendered themselves to 60+ evil, human eating kobolds with some really cool engineering wonders?
Tough spot. I find I go soft in these situations, so it’s good to set expectations up front: if you get captured by human-eating lizard people, you’re going to get eaten. To that end I wrote this: http://blog.trilemma.com/2014/10/what-will-they-do-with-us.html
..but I don’t think that will serve you in this context. The players clearly thought interesting adventure was to be had here, so it would be mean to just eat them. Some ideas:
1. Cut to some time later, ask them how they got away.
2. Tell them to make new characters, leaving the fate of their old party uncertain for now. (They can re-appear later.)
3. Internal divisions in the kobold group – some want to eat them, some don’t, and the division creates opportunities.
4. The kobolds want something from the players that will keep them alive – to serve as slave-guides, or to yield the secrets of magic.
5. The priest believes this is an inauspicious time to find prisoners, so they won’t do the usual things with them.
6. Have the kobolds attack a village while the players watch, as helpless captives. Give them some cool war wagon descriptions, but then one busts an axle and self-destructs noisily, tipping them over and breaking their cage.
7. Something else attacks the kobolds – riders of rohan, a dragon.
Give them the opportunity to be fantastic. Plan an escape but prompt them for each thing. Don’t roll for it.
“Jarl, tell us how you slipped your bonds… Ok, Alia, tell us why the guards didn’t catch you…. Phurburt, they were able to track your escape but lost the trail. Why?”
You spread the creative load, make them look awesome, AND keep the story going.
Edit: then begin play with the Chase!
Why is everyone suggesting to have the party escape? They willingly put themselves in a large enemy warband rife with different factions and opposing political motivations. I haven’t seen anything that implies they want out when they went out of there way to be there. They want to Be Awesome with kobolds. Let them.
As for advice, well, you have a large enemy warband with different factions (priests, warriors, “drivers”, and lizard handlers) and some kind of politics (a priest doesn’t want them there, but more generally, that’s the exact type of situation that’s going to breed backstabbing, cutthroating, and general politics. Plus you can play to the trope of priests being manipulative! perfect). Here’s some ideas:
* The “cohesive” warband, well, isn’t. Turns out the priests are actually manipulating the warriors into some ulterior motive separate from whatever their current actions are.
* There’s a small rebel faction working with/against/orthogonal to the warcamp, and there’s a representative there that reaches out to the party believing they can help.
* Something else. You even have seeds! There are secrets amongst the warband (between the factions? secrets from the players? secrets about their motives? who knows! Fun! :D) They want information? From where? Why? What for? Fun! A priest is angry? Why? Does he have something against the players (racial, principle, etc?) or does he just not want them in the way/potentially figuring things outs? There’s a lot of things to work with here, and basically going “And here you see kobolds… moving on…” is working against all those seeds, and the fact that the players have gone out of there way to say “we want kobolds!”.
If you know where to go with the story and kobolds are a distraction, just skip to the escape, as Michael and Aaron suggested…
But maybe just check with your players first: are they interested in the kobolds? if so (and there are these engineering wonders to investigate), use item 4 from Michael list.
Kobolds want something from the PCs, maybe related to the engineering work. Maybe they need a certain piece buried in a dungeon in exchange for freedom, maybe they use the PCs as baits to attack a human village or caravan, maybe there’s something special about the PCs so the kobolds won’t eat them (yet)…
I’d go with internal divisions and schemes. For example…
The kobold priest is angry because, dammit, now they have to drag these sacrifices back to In’ixthakra, the black dragon he supposedly “serves” and the tribe worships, because Her Majestic Scaliness has commanded them to do so. The other kobolds think this is great, sacrifices for their god, but Priesty privately chafes at her commands and really, really just wants to slaughter the lizardman village because they’re jerks.
So maybe Priesty quietly tells them what’s up, and arranges for them to escape a weak body guard. Or he tells them the dragon’s weakness and hopes that they’ll kill her, etc.
you guys are awesome and full of great ideas.
I have no idea where the story is going. The druid is in a hurry to get to the “heritage tree” to defend if from the great and aggressive Fire god who recently invaded the region. , The priest had a vision about these kobolds, and the bard who wanted to ambush the kobodls totally fell for the shiny war wagons, and she lead the party to split up and surrender to the kobolds in three groups.
and the gladiator (lizard man) was born at the Herritage tree, but he dislikes his family that still lives there.
I may be in over my head, but we laugh every week. 🙂
I think it would be awesome if the PCs, through a combination of combat skills and political manipulation, actually take command of the scouting party and lead it against some kind of common enemy.
The party is going to be brought before the kobolds’ ultimate master : the dreaded dragon Greedmondus Max. Greedmondus cares for little but adding to his hoard his hoard and riddle games. The party has better hope that they are good at both.
Greedmondus Max, Dreaded Dragon and Kobold Commander
Solitary, Huge, Magical, Intelligent, Terrifying
Claws/jaws/tail (b[2d12]+7 damage) HP: 20 Armor: 4
Reach, Forceful, Messy
A dragon’s lust for gold and jewels is well known—but Greedmondus excels at “hoard management”.
Custom Move: When a dragon breathes his mystic fire at you, ROLL+WIS. On a 10+, you find suitable cover. On a 7-9, you dodged but choose 2 anyway:
Your weapon melts on your hand.
Your armor burns and leaves you breathless for a while.
Say goodbye to your backpack.
On a 6-, you must take all three.
Could Greedmondus be the “new fire god”?
What i would do:
Ask them a couple of leading Questions how THEY want to approach their Situation and play to find out what happens.
Possible Questions:
– What useful detail did you learn about their Lizard-Mounts?
– How did you manage to befriend a high ranking kobold and who is it?
– What kind of supplies did you manage to hoard?
– What information did you collect by eavesdropping after a couple of days?
– do you want to play out a vision of your god (for the Cleric) on what to do with the enemy Priest?
– What crucial item do you need to operate the Kobold warmachines?
give them something but not everything and let them decide if they want to befriend the Kobolds, Fight them or flee asap. Its their Story. Give them the Opportunity to make it theirs.
Oh man… totally relevant:
http://roll1d12.blogspot.com/2014/09/so-you-got-captured-by-evil-humanoids.html